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United States is highly underpoliced. Look at this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.

by xyzzyz 4y ago

United States is highly underpoliced. Look at this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend... We have much fewer officers per capita than France or Germany, but these countries have much less crime than we do. Considering how much crime we have, we should have way more police than other countries, but it’s not the reality.

eli 4y ago
What's the relationship between crime rates and number of officers?
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  It is generally expected, and in fact almost always the case, that if you hire people to deal with a specific problem, hiring more of them will result in less of this problem, and conversely, hiring fewer will result in having more of that problem. At some point, of course, one would expect to see diminishing returns. However, it is beyond clear by looking at other similar countries, our past, recent evidence in police budget reductions etc., that we are nowhere near close to that.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Actually it appears that the more police you have the more misdemeanor arrests result, but this does not impact the clearance rate for violent felonies. In other words you get more hall monitors but not necessarily more detectives. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjc/azac005/6568129?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10... recent evidence in police budget reductions Only about 8% of US cities have reallocated police founding elsewhere; most have increased it since 2020, and in nearly half of jurisdictions it has risen by >10%. https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-increased-us-cities/story?id=91511971 https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-in... The US also spends more than most other developed countries as a % of GDP, though less than Russia and Costa Rica: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-984701cbc1c340e9 https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98...
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      > Actually it appears that the more police you have the more misdemeanor arrests result, but this does not impact the clearance rate for violent felonies. I don't have access to this study, so I cannot really comment on it, but this is just one study. When you take the evidence as a whole, the picture is quite different. See for example this systematic review, which looked at 49 separate studies and it did find that, yes, "police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour". Additionally, these misdemeanor arrests have been very useful in reducing violent crime rate in NYC. NYC cops under Giuliani and Bloomberg would harass people for trivial shit, find guns on them that they weren't allowed to possess, and then throw the book at them for it. This resulted in carrying a gun being too risky activity for NYC criminals, which resulted in great reduction in shootings, homicide, and other crime involving use of guns like robbery and carjacking. Now, of course, one might object to this strategy, based on morality or legality of it, but what you cannot object to is whether it worked, because it clearly did. This is my point: police activity reduces crime. > Only about 8% of US cities have reallocated police founding elsewhere; most have increased it since 2020, and in nearly half of jurisdictions it has risen by >10%. Given that inflation since 2020 has been over 10%, that means that more than half of jurisdiction did cut police funding in real terms. > The US also spends more than most other developed countries as a % of GDP, though less than Russia and Costa Rica: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98 https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98... And Russia and Costa Rica indeed have crime rates similar to ours. Rather more importantly than spend, though, is how much we actually get for it. Seems like policing is another one of those fields, like medicine and education, where we spend more than other countries as a percentage of GDP, but get less value for the spend. This is why I'm talking about actual metrics like police officers per capita, not dollars spent on policing.
- smt88 4y ago
  Adding officers doesn't lower crime. I've never seen data showing that it does. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/relationship-between-police-presence-and-crime-deterrence https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/relation...
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Have you ever looked for it? Here is a systematic review of available evidence: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8 > The systematic search strategies yielded 49 studies focusing on testing the effects of police presence or evaluating its measurement. We find evidence that police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour. Police presence focused on specific areas, times and types of crime achieves maximum effectiveness. The reviewed studies show a high degree of heterogeneity in reporting which limits comparability of findings across studies. Research on police presence presents evidence for significant crime preventative effects of focused police actions and shows strongest effects when focused on certain areas, times, or types of crimes Look at the 49 studies they went through. Most of them show that adding officers lowers crime. Now you have seen the data.
babypuncher 4y ago
And many of the officers we do have are woefully under-trained, and lack the strict psychological screening required in other parts of the world. This can likely be pinned on the fact that we under-pay our police, selecting for candidates who have alternative motives.
93po 4y ago
Whether we need more policing is a lot more complicated than just looking at crime rates. Firstly because this can only represent reported crime, and a lot of crime is not reported. And secondly because there are absolutely detrimental effects of policing, and this would lead into a conversation more about what the goals of policing should be. Do we care about slightly and temporarily reducing crime rates if we're also drastically increasing the amount of people getting displaced from their homes for bullshit reasons and placing massive burdens on their families as a result? Does incarcerating people too much lead to higher crime rates in the future when they're released? There's a ton of negative secondary effects.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  If you look at the most apples-to-apples comparison of crime rate between the countries, the homicide rate, it is beyond clear that the disparity between US and Europe is very much real, and not just an artifact of differing reporting rates. France or Germany very much do not have issues with underreporting homicides. You would have to have something like 2-3 unreported homicides for every reported homicide in Germany to equalize the homicide rates. It is abundantly clear that this is not the case. Now, given that the homicide rate gap is real and not just reporting artifact, what about other crime? It stands to reason that the disparities there are also real, but there still might be differences in reporting, which could either exaggerate or diminish the reported gap. Which is it? In my view, the latter is true: the gap between US and Europe is even worse than it seems. This whole thread is a great example: Americans don’t even bother reporting a lot of crime, because it is a common knowledge that it won’t do much. In Europe, people report much more petty crime, because the cops will actually follow up on a lot of it, and the justice system will actually punish the offenders. This means that the real crime gap is even bigger than the reported one. This is also clear to anyone who actually has experience living in both places. I grew up in Poland, I live in relatively safe US city (Seattle), and the amount of crime I observe here is probably a whole order of magnitude higher than I did back in Poland. > And secondly because there are absolutely detrimental effects of policing, and this would lead into a conversation more about what the goals of policing should be Yes, I agree that there is a trade off here. However, in US, the balance is completely lopsided towards the costs of crime. Criminals impose massive burden on everyone around them, including their families. Crime has enormous costs to victims, but also huge negative externalities. For example, if you own a house in a crime ridden neighborhood, then even if you are never a victim of crime yourself, just the fact that people avoid your neighborhood costs you probably tens of thousands of dollars in terms of lost property values. Businesses avoid crime ridden locations, resulting in fewer jobs and services for residents. Really, the negatives of increased policing would have to be quite enormous to make up for the benefits. For a real world example, look at how much more flourishing NYC has become after Giuliani and Bloomberg cleaned it up. Do you thing that NYC residents would prefer to go back to 1985 era? > Does incarcerating people too much lead to higher crime rates in the future when they're released? Compared to what? Even if you ignore deterrence role, incarceration reduces crime purely by incapacitating criminal’s ability to do crime. Hard to victimize people when you’re locked up. Crime is young men’s game, and most of it is committed by very small fraction of population. They commit most of their crime between 16 and 35, with crime activity sharply tapering thereafter. If you incarcerate those repeat offenders for many years, and release them only once they are older and cooled off, than increase in criminality induced by incarceration will be more than made up by reduction in criminality during prime crime years. We need to incarcerate more people, and do it for longer. That’s exactly how we achieved long decrease in crime, starting in mid 90s. People understood that. Senator Joe Biden was major sponsor of crime reform bill that was designed to do exactly that, put more criminals in jail for longer. It’s a shame that we were made to forget that, and now we reap the fruit of reduced policing and increased criminal exuberance, with crime rates hugely spiking starting from June 2020.
fmajid 4y ago
Part of that is because American police officers are much better paid than European ones, and cities can only afford so many.

by xyzzyz 4y ago

eli 4y ago

What's the relationship between crime rates and number of officers?

xyzzyz 4y ago
It is generally expected, and in fact almost always the case, that if you hire people to deal with a specific problem, hiring more of them will result in less of this problem, and conversely, hiring fewer will result in having more of that problem. At some point, of course, one would expect to see diminishing returns. However, it is beyond clear by looking at other similar countries, our past, recent evidence in police budget reductions etc., that we are nowhere near close to that.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Actually it appears that the more police you have the more misdemeanor arrests result, but this does not impact the clearance rate for violent felonies. In other words you get more hall monitors but not necessarily more detectives. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjc/azac005/6568129?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10... recent evidence in police budget reductions Only about 8% of US cities have reallocated police founding elsewhere; most have increased it since 2020, and in nearly half of jurisdictions it has risen by >10%. https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-increased-us-cities/story?id=91511971 https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-in... The US also spends more than most other developed countries as a % of GDP, though less than Russia and Costa Rica: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-984701cbc1c340e9 https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98...
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    > Actually it appears that the more police you have the more misdemeanor arrests result, but this does not impact the clearance rate for violent felonies. I don't have access to this study, so I cannot really comment on it, but this is just one study. When you take the evidence as a whole, the picture is quite different. See for example this systematic review, which looked at 49 separate studies and it did find that, yes, "police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour". Additionally, these misdemeanor arrests have been very useful in reducing violent crime rate in NYC. NYC cops under Giuliani and Bloomberg would harass people for trivial shit, find guns on them that they weren't allowed to possess, and then throw the book at them for it. This resulted in carrying a gun being too risky activity for NYC criminals, which resulted in great reduction in shootings, homicide, and other crime involving use of guns like robbery and carjacking. Now, of course, one might object to this strategy, based on morality or legality of it, but what you cannot object to is whether it worked, because it clearly did. This is my point: police activity reduces crime. > Only about 8% of US cities have reallocated police founding elsewhere; most have increased it since 2020, and in nearly half of jurisdictions it has risen by >10%. Given that inflation since 2020 has been over 10%, that means that more than half of jurisdiction did cut police funding in real terms. > The US also spends more than most other developed countries as a % of GDP, though less than Russia and Costa Rica: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98 https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-98... And Russia and Costa Rica indeed have crime rates similar to ours. Rather more importantly than spend, though, is how much we actually get for it. Seems like policing is another one of those fields, like medicine and education, where we spend more than other countries as a percentage of GDP, but get less value for the spend. This is why I'm talking about actual metrics like police officers per capita, not dollars spent on policing.
smt88 4y ago
Adding officers doesn't lower crime. I've never seen data showing that it does. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/relationship-between-police-presence-and-crime-deterrence https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/relation...
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  Have you ever looked for it? Here is a systematic review of available evidence: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8 > The systematic search strategies yielded 49 studies focusing on testing the effects of police presence or evaluating its measurement. We find evidence that police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour. Police presence focused on specific areas, times and types of crime achieves maximum effectiveness. The reviewed studies show a high degree of heterogeneity in reporting which limits comparability of findings across studies. Research on police presence presents evidence for significant crime preventative effects of focused police actions and shows strongest effects when focused on certain areas, times, or types of crimes Look at the 49 studies they went through. Most of them show that adding officers lowers crime. Now you have seen the data.

babypuncher 4y ago

And many of the officers we do have are woefully under-trained, and lack the strict psychological screening required in other parts of the world. This can likely be pinned on the fact that we under-pay our police, selecting for candidates who have alternative motives.

93po 4y ago

Whether we need more policing is a lot more complicated than just looking at crime rates. Firstly because this can only represent reported crime, and a lot of crime is not reported. And secondly because there are absolutely detrimental effects of policing, and this would lead into a conversation more about what the goals of policing should be. Do we care about slightly and temporarily reducing crime rates if we're also drastically increasing the amount of people getting displaced from their homes for bullshit reasons and placing massive burdens on their families as a result? Does incarcerating people too much lead to higher crime rates in the future when they're released? There's a ton of negative secondary effects.

xyzzyz 4y ago
If you look at the most apples-to-apples comparison of crime rate between the countries, the homicide rate, it is beyond clear that the disparity between US and Europe is very much real, and not just an artifact of differing reporting rates. France or Germany very much do not have issues with underreporting homicides. You would have to have something like 2-3 unreported homicides for every reported homicide in Germany to equalize the homicide rates. It is abundantly clear that this is not the case. Now, given that the homicide rate gap is real and not just reporting artifact, what about other crime? It stands to reason that the disparities there are also real, but there still might be differences in reporting, which could either exaggerate or diminish the reported gap. Which is it? In my view, the latter is true: the gap between US and Europe is even worse than it seems. This whole thread is a great example: Americans don’t even bother reporting a lot of crime, because it is a common knowledge that it won’t do much. In Europe, people report much more petty crime, because the cops will actually follow up on a lot of it, and the justice system will actually punish the offenders. This means that the real crime gap is even bigger than the reported one. This is also clear to anyone who actually has experience living in both places. I grew up in Poland, I live in relatively safe US city (Seattle), and the amount of crime I observe here is probably a whole order of magnitude higher than I did back in Poland. > And secondly because there are absolutely detrimental effects of policing, and this would lead into a conversation more about what the goals of policing should be Yes, I agree that there is a trade off here. However, in US, the balance is completely lopsided towards the costs of crime. Criminals impose massive burden on everyone around them, including their families. Crime has enormous costs to victims, but also huge negative externalities. For example, if you own a house in a crime ridden neighborhood, then even if you are never a victim of crime yourself, just the fact that people avoid your neighborhood costs you probably tens of thousands of dollars in terms of lost property values. Businesses avoid crime ridden locations, resulting in fewer jobs and services for residents. Really, the negatives of increased policing would have to be quite enormous to make up for the benefits. For a real world example, look at how much more flourishing NYC has become after Giuliani and Bloomberg cleaned it up. Do you thing that NYC residents would prefer to go back to 1985 era? > Does incarcerating people too much lead to higher crime rates in the future when they're released? Compared to what? Even if you ignore deterrence role, incarceration reduces crime purely by incapacitating criminal’s ability to do crime. Hard to victimize people when you’re locked up. Crime is young men’s game, and most of it is committed by very small fraction of population. They commit most of their crime between 16 and 35, with crime activity sharply tapering thereafter. If you incarcerate those repeat offenders for many years, and release them only once they are older and cooled off, than increase in criminality induced by incarceration will be more than made up by reduction in criminality during prime crime years. We need to incarcerate more people, and do it for longer. That’s exactly how we achieved long decrease in crime, starting in mid 90s. People understood that. Senator Joe Biden was major sponsor of crime reform bill that was designed to do exactly that, put more criminals in jail for longer. It’s a shame that we were made to forget that, and now we reap the fruit of reduced policing and increased criminal exuberance, with crime rates hugely spiking starting from June 2020.

fmajid 4y ago

Part of that is because American police officers are much better paid than European ones, and cities can only afford so many.